The Siege of Vienna: The Last Great Trial Between Cross & Crescent (33 page)

He was still trying hard to find more money at home. He required his administration in Dresden to raise a loan of 200,000 thaler; they said, dryly, that it was out of the question. He required the Estates of Upper Lusatia to find him 30,000 thaler.
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In both cases he wanted actual currency, his great need of the moment, not credit. Household economies at the Dresden court were also discussed; but there is no evidence that any of the suggestions provided extra money. The Saxon army simply continued to take from the rural population what it needed to keep moving. Payment was no doubt the exception rather than the rule, and no doubt the requisitioning of enough supplies for 10,000 men looked a hopeless business on the mountainous threshold of Bohemia round Teplice. But a week later in the central plain, just after the harvest, it was easier. For this reason, the threat to withdraw became less and less pointed; and John George knew that while the Elector of Brandenburg still held back, the Elector of Bavaria and the King of Poland were hurrying forward to take part in what might prove a glorious and exciting crusade. He and his officers were now near enough the Danube to smell battle.

Farther to the east, the cavalry continued to advance. The men and baggage of the infantry and artillery, with the Elector’s staff, passed through Votice and got to Tabor on 27 August. At both towns, soothing assurances came in from the court at Passau. Leopold accepted the Saxon demand for the free consignment of supplies during the march through Habsburg territory to the theatre of war. He also offered supplies for the coming campaign, provided that these could ultimately be charged to the account of the Saxon government. He left John George in full command of his troops, though reserving his own ultimate authority and the possible claims of the King of Poland. In general terms he accepted the principle that the Saxons could claim winter quarters in Habsburg territory, if these should be judged necessary; but said not a word about an adjustment of the northern frontier in the Elector’s favour. Bose, in his entry for 25 August, noted that ‘the whole court expressed itself satisfied’, and it seems as if the Habsburg assurances were just generous enough at a moment of crisis to silence John George’s more exacting councillors. At Votice, also, another diarist recorded items of news beneath the notice of serious politicians: the 26th was a heavy thunderous day, four musketeers were court-martialled for plundering, and one was executed.
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Not long afterwards the two parts of the Saxon army began to knit together again. From Nová Bystrice Bose and Flemming were sent to the Emperor, now
at Linz. The Saxons started crossing into Austria on the day that John Sobieski and Lorraine entered Ober-Hollabrun fifty miles east of them. They marched steadily forward, through Waidhofen which belonged to Lamberg’s family, and through Horn which belonged to Count Hoya. The troops camped in the open, and the Elector quartered comfortably in the residences of these great landlords; from the windows of the palace at Horn it was possible to survey the whole encampment of the Saxon army on 2 September. On the 3rd the men rested, and then made their way to the Danube. They reached Krems on 6 September. The last few days had passed without incident, although there was considerable nervousness about the alleged marauding of the Poles, with whom the Saxons were coming into contact for the first time. For one night most of John George’s regiments quartered on an island in the stream of the Danube. The Bavarians and Franconians were already over on the right bank of the river. The Poles were coming up on the left, farther downstream. The Saxons, in fact, now merged into the large and rapidly expanding army of relief, one of its best organised contingents.

III

Against this outstanding diplomatic success, the Emperor Leopold’s advisers had to set the total failure of their approaches to Frederick William of Brandenburg. Certainly, the Habsburg interest had its champions in Berlin. The Elector was too good a politician to let Rébenac, the tireless French envoy, have everything his own way, and Lamberg’s many visits served to remind Louis XIV that Frederick William never lost sight of the working alternative to his general policy (in these years) of partnership with France. If Fuchs and Meinders, industrious officials, were for the time being content to favour French interests and to accept modest French gifts of cash when offered,
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Prince John George of Anhalt-Dessau was a very different proposition. Wealthy, aristocratic, with a princess of the house of Orange for his wife and normally resident in Berlin, he could afford to play the part of the Elector’s life-long friend, unruffled by the Elector’s famous tantrums; and throughout 1683 he acted as an enthusiastic supporter of the Habsburgs. Derfflinger, Austrian by birth, perhaps the Elector’s favourite military commander, and the Electoral Prince Frederick, both stood by him. They all felt that Brandenburg ought to share in the common duty of states of the Empire, the defence of Emperor and Empire against aggressors. They urged, plausibly enough, that a Turkish thrust from Hungary towards Moravia and Silesia might come dangerously close to Brandenburg territory. They reminded the Elector of his claim by inheritance on some of the Silesian duchies. Yet they failed to assist Leopold at a time when their argument sounded strongest.

June and July 1683 were shocking months in the annals of the Hohenzollern court. It was learnt that Louis XIV had refused to ratify a draft agreement,
by the terms of which French troops would have held the Brunswick princes in check while Brandenburg (with Denmark) invaded Swedish territory in north Germany.
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The Elector’s sister and daughter-in-law both died; the Elector himself was troubled by the stone and the gout, and fell seriously ill. The doctors despaired of him, but he gradually recovered. His mood of irritation with the King of France was such that Rébenac found, temporarily, that the critics of France at court were in the ascendant. In June the Elector welcomed, with considerable courtesy, another short visit by Lamberg. Anhalt was optimistic about the prospect of an alliance with the Habsburg court.
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On 7 July, shortly before he hurried away from Vienna, Leopold wrote to Lamberg at Dresden: the enemy was at the gates, and he must go at once to Berlin and ask for help. In consequence, from the moment of the envoy’s arrival on 16 July, the Elector’s household in Berlin and Potsdam became a centre of intense discussion and intrigue. Frederick William was at first too ill to see Lamberg, who asked for the dispatch of 6,000 men to Vienna and offered 200,000 thaler for them. Fuchs replied politely that neither figure was satisfactory. The Elector would require at least 300,000 thaler for 6,000 men, and in any case he was convinced that an expeditionary force of 12,000 was needed in so grand an emergency.
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In his own mind, of course, the minister had to try and calculate whether a more or less substantial part of the army which had been intended for the campaign against Sweden, with the help of a French subsidy, could be transferred to Habsburg territory and maintained by Habsburg funds. He reminded Lamberg that the Elector expected the Emperor to come to terms with Louis XIV, but closed the discussion with two promising items of news. Anhalt was to go at once to Leopold’s court. Derfflinger was to take charge of the military preparations.

On the 23rd, Anhalt left Berlin. Whatever the exact tenor of his instructions, he told Lamberg, he was determined to negotiate in the Emperor’s favour. With an envoy so curiously insubordinate, the possibility of a misunderstanding was a very real one. To make matters worse Rébenac, writing an 28 July, was able to assure Louis XIV that ‘the Prince will find his instructions quite different from what he thought they would be when he left.’
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Indeed, the Elector’s standpoint fluctuated. He lamented the weakness of the Christian states in the face of a violent Turkish attack; but he was swayed by the fact that later news from Vienna was less catastrophic than the first reports. Rébenac, in a long private interview, emphasised with eloquence and skill all the arguments against sending the Brandenburg troops too far afield; it soon became clear, for example, that the Brunswick troops would remain in north Germany. The Elector began again to recollect that French subsidies were punctually paid, to appreciate that his major interests were focused in this northern area between the Vistula and Rhine. Unless he squeezed very substantial concessions from the court at Passau, the case against helping the Emperor was not as weighty as the case for keeping him weak. Almost from hour to hour the Elector tacked and tacked, without in the end altering the general course of his diplomacy.
On 22 July he agreed to send a mere 1,200 men to aid Sobieski in accordance with old treaty obligations.
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He sent a message to tell Anhalt that some 15,000 were assembling at Crossen on the Silesian border, but repeated to his envoy that a pacification in Germany must precede any military pact with Leopold. If old Derfflinger still felt hopeful of sharing the glories of a campaign against the Turks, Rébenac, steadily writing his dispatches to Louis XIV from Berlin, was confident that the Elector would stand firm in the French interest. Frederick William, he believed, had recovered his balance. The French envoy, not the Austrian soldier of fortune, was right.

Anhalt duly arrived at Passau with an impressive staff of servants and followers, and presented his proposals on Saturday, 7 August: peace must be made with France, the Elector offers 6,000 troops, he asks for their supply during the campaign, and lists a variety of financial demands which amount to a total of 500,000 thaler to be paid by Leopold.
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An agreement could be worked out in three days, he concluded, a courier to Berlin needed five days more and at once the Elector’s regiments would commence their march to the Danube. Königsegg, Stratmann and Zinzendorf, conferring together on the Sunday, did not share this rosy view of the immediate future. They found the Brandenburg demands unreasonable, requiring sums of money utterly beyond Leopold’s capacity to pay. They disliked the suggestion that ‘assignments’ of the revenues of various principalities in the Empire should be made over to Brandenburg by the Emperor’s fiat. They refused to admit the Elector’s claim to the Silesian duchy of Jägerndorf, which he was now apparently willing to trade in return for a huge monetary compensation—200,000 thaler, equal to the whole amount recently granted to Poland. Above all, in the Elector’s proposals there was no hint that Brandenburg intended to join the Habsburg system of alliances in the Empire in order to resist France, even supposing that his troops took part in the war against the Sultan. And if those troops were forthcoming, they would surely arrive too late to help in the relief of Vienna: instead, they would arrive in time to demand winter-quarters on Habsburg territory. Having listed all these objections, Leopold’s ministers solemnly decided to continue the discussions with Anhalt. It is possible that they realised the envoy’s own determination to come to terms, and overestimated his influence at Berlin. They had in mind one further point. If Vienna fell to the Turks in September, an outright rejection of Frederick William’s offer in August would have turned out unnecessary folly.

The second week of August in Passau, therefore, was partially taken up with conversations between Königsegg, Stratmann, and Anhalt. The debate can be reconstructed. One document, with comments added by Anhalt, shows Frederick William’s demand for a settlement with France watered down to the plan of a personal interview between Leopold and the Elector, to take place in the following October at Regensburg to discuss such a settlement. The Brandenburg troops must join the Habsburg army before the end of the first week in September. The question of Jägerndorf, or of any financial equivalent
for it, was to be left over until the close of the Turkish war. Anhalt then gave even more away. Certain it ‘puncta foederis Caesareo-Brandenburgici’ were drawn up.
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In this extraordinary draft, the final article visualised a common effort to undo the ‘reunions’ of imperial territory to France, after the Turks had been repulsed with the aid of 12,000 Brandenburg soldiers. Not surprisingly, in Königsegg’s lodging on Friday 13 August, the Austrian ministers reported to the Dutch and Swedish and Hanoverian representatives that they had been hard at work on a treaty with Frederick William.
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On paper, at least, they had scored a real diplomatic triumph; and a courier set out for Berlin. Further progress in that quarter could hardly be expected within the next ten days.

IV

The ministers turned, perhaps wearily, to deal with another problem.

Their immediate and essential duty was to take all possible steps to rescue Vienna, but their fundamental responsibility remained the defence of Habsburg interests as a whole. And these interests still required, in their judgment, a stubborn championship of Leopold’s position in Germany. When Louis XIV’s ambassador, Verjus, made a new offer to the Estates of the Empire at Regensburg on 26 July, the statesmen at Passau had to consider their reply.

The French proposal, accompanied by the sharpest invective against the Austrian and Spanish Habsburgs and their allies—who had neglected to defend Europe against the Sultan in order to intrigue shamefully against Louis—was that both the King of France and the Empire should publicly recognise the status quo in the Rhineland for a period of thirty years, leaving undecided the legal problem of ultimate sovereignty in the territories which the French had occupied since 1679. The King would not ask for the compensation to which he was entitled; and the offer stood open until 31 August.
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In other words, Louis and Louvois had determined not to intervene in the Empire for one more month; and during that month Turkish pressure, and the pressure of the German states friendly to France, and indeed of all those interests which genuinely believed that a settlement with France was the pre-condition of any effective action against the Ottoman power, were to squeeze from Leopold a significant gesture of surrender. In Regensburg the French knew that all the Rhineland Electors—Cologne, Mainz, Trier and the Palatine—were their allies, while the Brandenburg representative, Gottfried Jena,
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never wavered from the Francophile line of policy unreservedly followed by Frederick William in the Diet. In fact, they could rely on the College of Electors. Were Leopold’s ministers, expelled from Vienna, strong enough to resist Kara Mustafa, Louis XIV, and at least five of the Electors?